There are so many reasons to travel at any point in your life. People travel for business. People travel for leisure. People travel to make new memories. Wherever you travel, whenever you travel, make sure you travel when you're young.
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Travel
Meet Alexis Henry. Alexis has lived in Cameroon, India and Panamá. She loves traveling and living abroad because she's able to dig deeper and appreciate the culture much more than a tourist ever would. She is hoping to travel to every continent in her near future. Alexis is most excited about combining her love for financing and female empowerment, incorporating them into her volunteer experience. Continue reading to learn more about Alexis!
Meet Jenna VanLooven. Jenna has never lived abroad, and excited to finally get an opportunity to do so. Jenna is lucky enough to have a job that allows her to work from anywhere with internet, so she didn't have to convince her boss to work remotely! She is finally at a point in her life that is allowing her to participate in this wonderful volunteer experience. Jenna is most excited to learn something new and give back to the community. Continue reading to learn more about Jenna!
Meet Ali Al Herz. She is a Saudi Arabia native who went to school in the United States and loves to travel. Ali is passionate about helping people and looking forward to putting her engineering skills and knowledge to use by helping others. She is currently looking for a new job, and thought this would be the perfect opportunity while waiting! Continue reading to learn more about Ali.
Meet Neil O'Brian. Neil is a PhD student looking to continue his work in a different country. Neil has spent some time abroad, in Oxford, England, during his undergrad degree. After convincing his professors to let him participate in Venture with Impact, Neil is most excited to live in a new country, meet new people, and experience a new culture. Continue reading to learn more about Neil!
Make your employer as psyched as you are for Venture with Impact.
You are about to embark on an incredible adventure. Venture with Impact can be just as valuable for your employer as it is for you. We want to help you convince them with these tips. Once you've thought through your pitch, we recommend creating a written business case and communicating your case
You may be wondering what it's like to leave your home and live in Trujillo, Peru for two months. Wonder no more! I've put together some photos of various living spaces that the program participants will be staying in for two months while they are volunteering and working remotely. The participants live in a 2 or 3 bedroom, fully furnished apartment that includes a full kitchen, utilities and reliable internet.
Meet Alyssa Hampton. Alyssa is currently living in London and working for an education company, traveling around the United Kingdom to visit with her clients. A fun fact about Alyssa is that her parents lived abroad before they decided to start their family. As long as she can remember, she has wanted to do the same. Alyssa is most excited to improve her Spanish and learn from a new culture. Continue reading to learn more about Alyssa!
Meet Josie Santiago. Josie is a program associate and has a job that allows her to work remotely. Part of her job includes sending young people to live abroad. By immersing herself in this experience, she is able to learn more what it's like for her students! Continue reading to find our more about Josie
Meet Jesse Olsen. A 32 year old entrepreneur, CEO and founder of Jump Rope Inc. - an EdTech Company. Jesse has a knack for travel, but this will be his first time volunteering abroad. Looking to escape the New England winter, Jesse is most excited to meet new people and make new friends, all while brushing up on his Spanish. Continue reading to find out more about Jesse!
Daniel is a 27 year old who was looking to shake up his engineering career. With his wife by his side, Daniel & Kayla will be living and volunteering abroad in Trujillo, Peru. Daniel will be working with both Moche and Earth Peru. A few things Daniel will be helping with include engineering of building with reusable materials (such as building a kindergarten out of plastic water bottles), helping form a technical plan for the captation box of a water system, & installing solar panels in elementary schools. Continue reading to learn more about Daniel and why he put in his two weeks notice to make a difference and join Venture With Impact.
Kayla McMullen is a 27 year old physician recruitment coordinator about to start on an adventure of a lifetime alongside her husband Daniel. This will be Kayla's first time living abroad. She will be volunteering with Vive Peru in Trujillo, Peru. Here, she will do a hospital rotation which will include observing clinical procedures and coordinating community events and activities. Kayla will also be helping Vive Peru with public health outreach where she will do home visits to assist with healthy habits, visit families, evaluate home conditions (kitchen hygiene, animals, portable water) and answering questions that families may have. Continue reading to learn more about Kayla and why she decided to pursue Venture With Impact.
As a Venture with Impact-er, you will shape your own destiny. We’re just here to make the ride a little bit easier and a lot more fun. Here’s what an average week might look like for our participants joining the Peruvian pilot program in Trujillo this winter.
Monday
Forget Monday Monday: at Venture with Impact it’s Monday Funday!
Most of the group works a hard 8 hour day on their laptops at home or in the number of cafes dotting Trujillo’s Plaza de Armas.
Dan and Lila have Mondays off, and they’ve arranged to spend all eight Mondays of the program teaching English at a public school in Alto Trujillo through Espaanglisch’s Little English Program.
Tuesday
Another day at the office! Except today’s office is the large beachside Otra Cosa café in Huanchaco, twenty minutes from Trujillo.
A few participants grab tamales by the national university’s teeming campus for lunch.
Uri and Meg work standard hours of 8 am to 4 pm each day for their jobs as recruitment managers in the San Francisco Bay Area. They’ve signed up to volunteer with Earth Peru, a local environmental agency. Today they’re taking a break from installing solar panels in schools throughout Trujillo, and are joining local volunteers for a massive beach clean-up twenty miles north of the city along some of Peru’s most pristine coastline.
The two VWImpact-ers make it back to Trujillo just in time to meet the rest of the group as they wrap up the evening with local red grape wine tasting during a history lesson on Peruvian independence at Cafe Dezona Deza in downtown Trujillo.
Wednesday
Early bird surfing is in season in January! We’re catching waves by 7:30 and back online by 9 am. Most of the group frees up their afternoon for a 3 pm cultural tour of the city by a guest lecturer from the University of Trujillo’s architecture department.
Solo-seeking Han is not down for the group fun today. He’s applying his educational background in finance to volunteer at SKIP Wednesdays and Saturdays. At SKIP’s office in Trujillo, Han works with local accountants to arrange micro-financing and crediting options for Peruvian farmers.
That night the full crew of 20 Impacters and 2 VWI staff gather in one of Trujillo’s "Huariques" or small local Peruvian eateries. Participants share large fuentes of ceviche mixto and bottles of the local Cusqueña beer. At our weekly Huarique meetup, we discuss how everyone’s volunteer projects are going, what to prepare for the optional upcoming weekend trip, and take time to hash out any concerns our Impacters have about work, social life, or anything else on our minds.
Thursday
While most of the crew is using this Thursday as a work day and splitting their professional time between their wifi-connected apartments and the VWI lounge, Ethan is assisting veterinarians at a local animal shelter by bathing, feeding and playing with a new litter of puppies as well as administering vaccines to newly registered animals.
Friday
Although the majority of VWI participants work remotely from their jobs back home, Ethan, Krista, and Juan have decided to take the full two months to volunteer and travel. Krista is a freelance photographer and has volunteered part of her time to visit the sites of many of Venture with Impact’s partner nonprofits to take photos. Juan spends his mornings at Huanchaco beach teaching swimming lessons and his afternoons planning and implementing public health workshops with Vive Perú. Working with Vive Perú, Juan has found that one of the local communities is not thoroughly sanitizing their water. This Friday Juan is holding a workshop for families about the importance of using clean water, and methods for purifying their water.
Saturday-Sunday
The weekend is here! Almost all participants leave early Saturday morning for the planned but optional 4 hour trip to Huamachuco, in the Sierra of Perú. Upon arrival half the group decides to hike 8 km to the ancient site of Marcahuamachuco with a local guide, while the remainder of the group spends the afternoon in the nearby public hot springs. Everyone meets up later that night for Pisco Sours, the national cocktail and canchas (corn nuts). A few people taste fried cuy (guinea pig!), which is popular in the sierra region around Huamachuco.
After a night in a local hospedaje, VWI participants explore the local market in the morning sipping quinoa from a cup that was sold to them by a street vendor. The group catches a bus back to Trujillo in the early afternoon so that they are fresh for another week of work, volunteer and travel!
Cas Cas, Perú
To me, a Latin American Córdoba. Narrow streets closed in by cement walls. The wooden Spanish balconies and terra cotta roofing provide hints of old world influence.
Marinera Peruana is the dance of the Peruvian Sierra and originated in Andalucía, Spain
In the past fifty years the pueblito has developed an economía de uvas. Uvas are grapes and you'll see them in all parts of Cas Cas. The surrounding green and gold mountains and their valleys have become a home to vineyards, in which millions of grape vines are sowed each year. You can buy a kilo of uvas rojas for 2 soles, about 60 cents. The fat juicy grapes are used to make less delicious semi-seco wine.
After a few weeks of foamy mouth-watery Pisco Sours, I had high expectations for this nationally known wine region just two hours from Trujillo, Perú. The festival of uvas was taking place, which was an opportunity to try all of the local wine in the town's small stadium. Semi-seco, which translates to semi-dry, is in fact not dry at all, it is almost unbearably sweet (for a wine). The wine is hardly fermented and sugar is added after the fermentation process. There is an even sweeter wine (the dulce) that is available at all of the bodegas (wine stores). According to the French guy whom I traveled with, the region's seco (dry) wine is worse than the cheapest boxed wine one can find in France. Maybe I was being a bit bougie when I asked at one of the bodegas, "would you compare this to a Cabernet?" The shop owner replied with a confused and somewhat irritated look.
Needless to say the local flavors were somewhat of a let down, but the views made up for it.